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City councillors are looking to the courts for help in seizing Captain John’s floating restaurant and evicting its owner from the former waterfront icon.

Last year, city officials turned off the taps because John Letnik owes about $1 million in property taxes and slippage fees going back 11 years. He hasn’t paid a water bill since 2006.

On Monday, the government management committee agreed that the city, Toronto Port Authority and Waterfront Toronto should ask the courts to evict Letnik from the M.S. Jardan, where he has been living. The legal recommendations provided to the committee are confidential because they pertain to litigation or potential litigation.

“I would recommend to him that he figure out a way to walk off that gangplank and get on with the rest of his life,” Councillor Pam McConnell said after the committee vote.

Letnik has no such plans.

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“They’re not going to move me,” even if it means being forcibly removed from the vessel, Letnik said at city hall. “Here I am after 15 months, I’m still on the ship.”

Once a “jewel on the waterfront” the boat is now an “old rusting hulk,” committee chair David Shiner told the meeting.

“It’s time has come.”

McConnell said the issue is more problematic than if a homeowner owes back taxes. “The water lot is owned by the port authority, a federal agency,” she said. “We can’t just walk in and seize property that’s on their property.”

The situation is further complicated by the fact Letnik does not believe he should have to pay taxes, even after Superior Court ruled he was on the hook.

“What the committee said today is ‘that’s enough,’ that we can’t continue to have you live off the public,” McConnell said, adding it could take up to eight months for the courts to make a decision.

As for the unpaid taxes, McConnell said she can’t discuss legal directions, but “if Captain John worked with us and the boat was removed in a timely fashion I believe that council would look on his co-operation favourably.”

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